AuthorTopic: Posting photos (Read 1206 times)

Hi Folks,I've been trying to post some photos but the file size is too big. I used to have a piece of software that enabled me to do this easily but it's defunct. Now I am left with windows 10. If I go into my photo file there are lots of options but I can't find a way to reduce the file size of the pictures. Am I missing something obvious? Any help much appreciated.Thanks Sue

Hi Folks,I've been trying to post some photos but the file size is too big. I used to have a piece of software that enabled me to do this easily but it's defunct. Now I am left with windows 10. If I go into my photo file there are lots of options but I can't find a way to reduce the file size of the pictures. Am I missing something obvious? Any help much appreciated.Thanks Sue

For Windows, the tool of choice by a distance is a program called IrfanView http://www.irfanview.com/ It has many features that you may in time come to love but for me, it is the image file resizer par excellence.

Open your image file in this program and use the Image, Resize/Resample menu command. It's the number of pixels (dots) in the image which primarily governs its file size. For example, halving the number of pixels in each dimension (so that you don't change the image proportions) quarters both the number of pixels and size of file. Reducing the number of pixels on the long edge to say 800 should give you a good compromise between enough detail and reduced file size (but experiment if necessary). Save your reduced size image with a different name so you don't overwrite your original!

If using a Mac the built in "Photos" application enables you to choose the degree of jpeg compression and the size in pixels. Careful adjustment to both gives a decent sized image that is well within the size limit set on the forum. For example the attached image widest dimension is 1000 pixels and file size 140kb. Click on it to see full size.

I don't use Windows but I'm sure it must include some photo management software that will do the same things.

On one web site that I maintain, I can upload pictures of almost any size and they are resized by server side software. The resizing only fixes the pixel size, it could also standardize the compression ratio of a JPEG. It wasn't a lot of PHP code (using Imagick) to organize the process.

I'm surprised that the forum software used by melnet can't do something similar to limit the size (both pixel dimensions and file size) of images after they have been uploaded.

Slight deviation from the original topic, but I've noticed that many Melnet members have photos of themselves under their usernames and I'm wondering how you do this. I can see the "add an avatar" option in the "Profile" page, but if I try to add a jpg image it tells me it's not an avatar. Please would someone enlighten me? Cheers, David